A paramedic has been jailed for ten and a half years after secretly administering abortion pills to a pregnant woman, which resulted in the loss of her unborn baby.
After being told by the woman he was in a relationship with, who did not know he was married, that she was pregnant, Stephen Doohan, 33, inserted an abortion drug into her vagina without her knowledge during consensual sex.
After pleading guilty in May to sexual assault and inserting a drug into the woman’s vagina, causing her to abort, Doohan was jailed for 10 years and six months earlier this week at Glasgow High Court.
The court heard how the woman’s suspicions were first aroused when Doohan did something she was unable to see. Judge Lord Colbeck said “[The woman] felt something hard being inserted into her vagina and believed this was a sex toy”.
However, after discovering unusual discharge in her underwear and experiencing stomach cramps the following day, the woman returned to Doohan’s flat.
“She took some diazepam and went into a deep sleep, and felt [Doohan] initiating sexual contact”, the judge said. “She felt you inserting something hard from under the mattress. She was suspicious of your actions”.
“When you went to the bathroom, she took the opportunity to look under the mattress”, where the woman found some tablets.
“The [woman] then carried out an internet search for abortion tablets and confronted [Doohan] over [his] actions”.
Lord Colbeck added “You planned out what you did to your victim using resources available to you as a paramedic”.
The woman went to hospital after collapsing in the shower and subsequently learnt she had had a forced abortion.
Doohan criticised for “manipulating the woman”
Doohan said he had procured the pills from a doctor.
During the investigation, it emerged that Doohan looked up medical information on the drug misoprostol on the day the woman told him she was pregnant. The court was told that misoprostol can be “administered for the purpose of managing a miscarriage or inducing a termination of pregnancy”.
After the forced abortion, the woman reported Doohan to the ambulance service, who passed the information to the police, and Doohan was arrested.
Fiona Kirkby, Procurator Fiscal for High Court Sexual Offences, said “Stephen Doohan’s calculated and heinous actions caused the loss of the victim’s pregnancy, robbing her of plans she had for the future”.
Judge Lord Colbeck told Doohan “You put [the woman] through considerable pain over a number of days and left her facing a lifetime of pain and loss”, and described Doohan’s offences as “almost as serious as any this court is ever asked to sentence”.
Dangers of the ‘pills by post’ at-home abortion scheme
Whilst it is unclear whether he used the ‘pills by post’ at-home abortion scheme to procure the pills, others have done so to devastating effect, highlighting the dangers of the scheme. In December of last year, Stuart Worby was found guilty of sexually assaulting a pregnant woman and slipping her abortion pills, which resulted in the loss of her 15-week unborn baby. He obtained the pills via an associate from one of the largest abortion providers in the UK through the pills-by-post scheme.
Worby was found guilty at Norwich Crown Court, with the court hearing details of how the 40-year-old had crushed one set of abortion pills – mifepristone – into a glass of orange juice, which the unnamed woman unknowingly drank. He then inserted a number of tablets of misoprostol, another abortion drug, inside the woman after using deception to engage in sexual activity with her.
In June 2023, Carla Foster was found guilty of taking abortion pills prescribed by BPAS, Britain’s largest abortion provider, at 32-34 weeks gestation after admitting to lying about her gestational age and claiming to be 7 weeks pregnant. She described being traumatised by the face of her dead baby, whom she named Lily.
Before the introduction of the at-home abortion scheme, women were required to have an in-person consultation with a medical professional and take mifepristone, the first abortion pill used for a medical abortion, under medical supervision in the clinic.
If at-home abortions had not been introduced, Stuart Worby would not have been able to obtain these pills from this abortion provider, and this tragic case would not have happened. The woman involved would not have been spiked and her baby would not have had his or her life ended at 15 weeks gestation.
Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said “The despicable actions of Stephen Doohan highlight just one of the dangers of abortion pills, which are sadly now available all too easily through the disastrous ‘pills by post’ at-home abortion scheme. The devastating effects of this scheme have been seen in the cases of Stuart Worby and Carla Foster”.
“Given the major issues with at-home abortion schemes and the high-profile cases of women using the scheme to abort later in pregnancy, the Government must immediately put an end to the ‘pills by post’ at-home abortion scheme”.
